


Charles F. Xavier Unmuted

by InsertSthMeaningful



Category: X-Men (Alternate Timeline Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Enemies to Lovers Speed-Run, Erik You Slut, Exhibitionism, Gratuitous Shakespeare Abuse, Honestly Charles What Are You Thinking, Humor, M/M, No Smut, Nudity, Online Classes, Sorry Not Sorry, Voyeurism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-13
Updated: 2021-01-13
Packaged: 2021-03-18 06:28:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,301
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28738773
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/InsertSthMeaningful/pseuds/InsertSthMeaningful
Summary: Charles gets rather more than what he bargained for after he accidentally leaves himself unmuted in a Zoom class and drops a not-so-G-rated remark about fellow student Erik Lehnsherr.Then again, he doesn't really mind the outcome.
Relationships: Erik Lehnsherr/Charles Xavier
Comments: 25
Kudos: 106





	Charles F. Xavier Unmuted

**Author's Note:**

> Yes hello it's me procrastinating on pretty much everything in my life right now.   
> Betaed by good ol' me. Feel free to point out spelling and grammar mistakes!

“-and in my opinion – which of course doesn’t have to be everybody else’s – I just think we should allow for a more general queer reading of Shakespeare’s work instead of nit-picking every detail about mutant representation,” concluded Charles, eyes glued firmly to his laptop’s camera until the last word had left his mouth and he allowed his eyes to flicker down to his screen.

He was met with a few yawns, a dozen confused stares and a very pissed off glare from Zoom user _Erik Lehnsherr (he/him)_. Dr Betsy Braddock, the instructor for the course on _Queer Early Modern English Literature_ , gave a calm nod as Charles switched off his mic and leaned back in his indoor wheelchair.

“Thank you, Mr Xavier,” she spoke, in that polished British upper-class accent which made Charles feel right at home (and which, Raven claimed, gave her a headache when he listened to his lectures without headphones, but what did his sister know about high culture, anyway). “Shakespeare is indeed rich in mutant-coded figures and progressive viewpoints even we have not achieved yet, but for today, we’ll go back to concentrating on Viola’s crossdressing. Mr Lehnsherr, I saw your break-out room’s mic activity was exceptionally high. Would you maybe like to present your group’s findings for us?”

Heaving a quiet groan, Charles cracked his back and watched in desperation as Lehnsherr leaned forward on what looked like the ratty mattress of his bed to unmute himself. It wasn’t that he was uninterested in what the other student had to say, no – the thing was more that he _knew_ , even without being able to telepathically access Lehnsherr’s mind like in the lecture hall, what was to come. And what was to come was an admittedly sharp-witted analysis of their reading material which would, however, quickly veer off into mutant rights territory.

The one thing that never disappointed, Charles mused, was probably Lehnsherr’s _frankly ravishing_ voice. Calm, sharp, composed, never a beat off in its slightly Germanic intonation. _Eargasm_ , Charles thought, before he promptly scrapped that potential rabbit hole from his mind.

“Okay then-” Lehnsherr cleared his throat, and Charles’ lips twitched up in a smile – it would have been adorable that the guy always started his sentences with _Okay then_ had it not also been so unnerving- “the one thing that’s probably stood out to us most is the fact that we never see Viola don her maiden weeds again on stage, or in the last act. She never really returns to her female identity, and as Yasmine pointed out…”

Forgoing the meaning of Lehnsherr’s utterances in favour of indulging in their sonorous quality, Charles reached for his cup of peppermint tea and took a small sip. Outside, the sun had already set, painting the grounds of the Xavier mansion with its last indirect light, and a crow was cawing in the fir tree right in front of Charles’ window. It was warm in his room, a quarter to six pm on a late autumn afternoon, and barely ten minutes until class ended.

He was allowed to zone out for a while, wasn’t he?

Not before long, however, Charles found his gaze wandering back to his laptop screen – to the little square in which Lehnsherr’s silhouette moved, to be specific. And he would be lying if he said he didn’t like what he saw: a face that looked like carved from marble, with cheekbones that could cut Emma Frost’s diamond arse, and narrow yet sophisticated lips that Charles was certain Lehnsherr could use for other things than ranting.

And those eyes. Lovely, lovely jade eyes, flashing green one moment, a pale shade of grey the next. Charles pushed what was most definitely _not_ a wistful sigh, sinking deeper in his chair.

“Mhm, one moment please,” Dr Braddock interrupted Lehnsherr’s raving. “One of you guys still has their mic on, and I can’t find them. Could you please check if you’re all muted?”

Charles glanced fleetingly at this Zoom’s interface. Nope, couldn’t be him. He looked up to find Azazel scrunching up his red face in a guilty grimace, while MacTaggert rolled her eyes and gave expression to the annoyance Charles felt. Up in the top row, Lehnsherr (Charles had _not_ moved him where he could see him better, of course not, what could possibly get you thinking that) waited to continue, coiled taut like a spring.

At last, after pottering about on her desk for a bit, Dr Braddock nodded. “Thank you, it seems that solved the problem. Mr Lehnsherr, please, continue.”

“Alright, thanks.” Lehnsherr nodded, eyes focused on the screen, probably pulling up his notes. “Okay then. As I was saying, though Mr Xavier seems to disagree, we should also consider the twin’s obviously mutant-coded transformations-”

Trying his best not to glare, Charles raked a hand over his face. Typical Lehnsherr. He’d have thought that after the dozen or so friendly text messages they’d exchanged, he’d be safe from personal attacks.

Then again, they weren’t exactly what you could call friends. Yes, Charles had reacted to Erik’s first message asking about notes with an inviting smiley face, and then Erik had proceeded to check in every day when Charles had come down with a minor cold and sounded slightly sniffly every time he spoke up in lectures, but that had probably been just to make sure Charles didn’t die of the plague while he was still useful to Erik. More of a symbiosis than a friendship, really.

And now Erik was dragging his analysis – and Charles himself if you thought about it – in front of the whole course. Stewing silently, Charles sipped his tea.

Lehnsherr was currently twirling a paperclip around his fingers without touching it as he talked. “In fact, Viola’s ability to disguise herself without being discovered might be due to a mutation. Maybe Shakespeare never specified what it was, but it’s a topic that needs to be talked about: the emancipation of mutants in history. Even if _some_ people in this class don’t think so.” There, he pointedly narrowed his eyes at what Charles knew had to be his designated square of Lehnsherr’s Zoom interface.

Hiding his mouth behind his teacup as the man continued, Charles grumbled, “Sometimes I wonder if you’re as vocal in bed as you are about mutant rights, Lehnsherr.”

Lehnsherr - half-way through a sentence about Antonio’s possible pheromone control - broke off. In fact, everyone in the Zoom call seemed to be doing a double-take, suddenly awakened from their late afternoon lethargy. Dr Braddock’s purple eyebrows shot up on her forehead.

Oh. So the unmuted mic _had_ been Charles’ after all.

Feeling a furious blush crawl up his cheeks, Charles hastily muted himself and attempted to look about as scandalised as the rest of the students. Dr Braddock was squinting at her screen, probably in search of the culprit, while a dozen messages popped up in the group chat, wild speculations about who it had been already growing rank. Charles once again thanked the gods for Zoom’s buggy indication of who was speaking.

Then, a private message only addressed to him popped up.

> **From** _Erik Lehnsherr (he/him)_ **to** _you_
> 
> **18:03:** that was you wasn’t it

Charles thought he had never blushed so hard in his whole life. Desperately attempting to string together an answer, he felt relief flood him when Dr Braddock sighed, leaned back in her chair and said, “Okay, well. That was an unexpected turn of events, and I hope that whoever did it knows that I won’t ever tolerate sexual harassment in my lectures – no one should, really. But seeing as we’re already five minutes overdue, I’m going to close this meeting for now. Mr Lehnsherr, if you want you can take up your point next week, but for today I wish everyone a lovely evening.”

Her words had barely rung through the line when people started to pop out, and without his heart beating high and hard in his throat, Charles scrambled for the _Leave meeting_ button.

Only when the Zoom window had vanished and he was left staring at the corgi pup he had set as his laptop background, Charles leaned forward in his wheelchair and buried his face in his hands.

His muffled screams of embarrassment could probably be heard on the whole ground floor.

Three hours, four cups of tea and one uneventful dinner later, Charles was back to sitting in front of his desk, staring at his screen as he attempted to make sense out of Cassidy’s scrawling handwriting on the physics slides. Who in heaven’s name had taught the boy to write? An ant colony?

Just when he thought he had made sense of the formula, his phone vibrated with an incoming message. Charles cursed, grappling for the device. Now he had to start all over again.

Oh dear. Three unread texts from Lehnsherr’s number, and thirteen on WhatsApp. Charles had to give it to him – the man _was_ persistent.

He had barely set that thought aside for later in favour of bending back over his physics worksheets, when Zoom popped up on his laptop, blinking insistently. On the brink of gnawing off his own hands, Charles looked up at the caller ID-

-and recoiled.

Could Lehnsherr maybe _not_ call him after what had happened? Couldn’t they just let this die a silent death and never, _ever_ talk to each other again?

Like a deer caught in the headlights, Charles stared at the screen. Lehnsherr kept calling. And calling. And calling. He was probably trying to erode Charles’ self-preservation instinct – and the worst part was that it was working.

After what felt like a small eternity but was most likely just one minute, Charles caved. Preparing for demise, he clicked onto the _Accept call_ button.

His camera image flickered into existence, minuscule in comparison to Lehnsherr’s which filled the whole screen.

Charles frowned. Except that there was no Lehnsherr in sight. A mussed blanket lay over a narrow mattress, the grainy yellow light of a bedside lamp slanting over its white expanse, and- were those clothes strewn over the pillow at the cast-iron headend? Trousers and _briefs?_

“Hello,” came Lehnsherr’s voice from off-screen, and Charles almost knocked over his cup of tea.

“ _Christ_.” He leaned back in his chair, smoothing down a few unruly curls he noticed sticking up in his camera image. “Yes, hello. Look, if you’re calling about what happened today in _Queer Literature_ , I’m really very sorry and I didn’t mean to molest you. It won’t happen again, and can we _please just forget about it-_ ”

“If you think I’ll let you off the hook that easily, you’re _wrong_ , Xavier.” And now something was moving, lifting the camera up so Charles got more of a bird's view of Lehnsherr’s bed.

Sighing, he picked up his cup of lukewarm tea and took a sip. Then, he adopted a smile which he hoped didn’t look too much like a grimace. “I just- Okay, I really don’t know what to tell you. I’ve apologised, it was a dumb slip-up on my part, and I’d really appreciate it if we could just move beyond that now. Why did you have to video-call me about it, anyway?”

“Well, you wanted to know if I’m as much of a screamer between the sheets as I’m about mutant rights, yes?” Finally, Lehnsherr plopped down onto his bed, wearing a smile-

-and Charles spat his mouthful of tea all over his keyboard-

-wearing a smile, and not much else. Virtually glowing in the soft light of his bedside lamp, Lehnsherr was sat on his mattress stark naked, with a few strands of his hair falling over his forehead and jade eyes as though he had just come straight out of the shower.

“So, I thought maybe you cared to find out,” he finished, his gaze burning right through Charles’ screen into his eyes.

“I, um. Uh.” Charles fumbled for words. None came. There was a drop of tea running down his chin, and a flush building high up on his cheeks, but he couldn’t quite find it in himself to care.

After a few seconds of deathly silence, Lehnsherr pursed his lips. “Just so you know: I usually don’t do this. Like, I’ve never done it before, actually, and if you’re taking screenshots right now I’ll come to your house myself and I’ll eviscerate you-”

“Ah, there’s really no need for that.” Finally, Charles found he could lift his hand and wipe his mouth. “It’s just, well, I really wasn’t prepared for this.”

And maybe it was just the light, or maybe it was Lehnsherr’s camera, but Charles thought the man was starting to blush.

“I guess I should’ve warned you first,” he muttered, his eyelashes arching in that delicious way as he glanced down, starting to draw a pair of briefs over to himself.

Charles almost choked on his splutters. “No, no, Erik, it’s quite alright, really.”

“Really?”

“Really.” Without his conscious doing, Charles felt a smile bloom on his face. “And I’d be lying if I- Well, you’re hot. You don’t see me complaining.”

“You think I’m-” Erik’s eyes widened almost imperceptibly. The briefs stayed where they were.

“Of course I do, darling,” Charles purred – _Jesus_ , when had he started _purring_? – as he stapled his hands under his chin and leaned forward. Then, feeling like he was standing at the top of a cliff, taking the step which would send him plunging down into the roiling sea below, he murmured, “So why don’t you lie back and show me more?”

Now most definitely blushing, Erik let out a sound that was somewhere between a moan and a whine. Then, licking his lips, searing eyes locked with the camera – _with Charles_ – he laid back against his mattress and showed Charles _more._

**Author's Note:**

> Please drop a comment if you liked it!


End file.
